Eclipse
by Tigre
Summary: Ohh...I really suck at summaries. ^^; Let's put it this way: Hogwarts is in danger. Our favorite characters are never safe. There are lots of dead people now. And...a decent amount of romance in upcoming chapters! r/r


Eclipse  
Chapter One: Cryptic Meanings  
Author: Tigre  
  
A/N: This idea has been floating around in my head for over a month now.... More at bottom. Enjoy this, s'il vous plait! Two months, really...GOING ON THREE!  
  
Really special a/n: I'm really sad about what happened in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. May justice be served, and may family members unite! God Bless America...let's hope that whoever did this gets just what he (or she, but I really think the person is a he...**terrorist in Afghanistan**...) gets just what he set himself (or herself) for! People, don't be mean to peeps of Islamic faith. A very small number of them attacked the US, but that doesn't mean that they're all out to mercilessly kill others! Same with all other prejudices. In other words: DON'T BE AN IDIOT! Erm...enjoy the story, even though it is very little happiness to make the burden the sadness go away. :( That's why we have fanfiction.net!!!!!!!  
  
Disclaimer: the normal.  
***  
  
Silence. Pure, untouched, delicate, lovely, serenely uneasy silence. This type of immortal piece was like a wineglass- lovely in its unearthly aura. Silence was also like a wineglass in consistency- both were extremely sensitive to the touch. The littlest movement might throw off the divinely perfect balance.  
A dark cloud hung over the sky near Hogwarts, school of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The moon was shining in all of its golden splendor, making midnight seem like midday. It was quiet...so quiet that the noiseless sound seemed to break the pressure inside of your eardrum- without a thing ever being uttered.  
A tree seemed to shudder as the cool fall breeze passed over the grounds with an inaudible whisper. With its shudder, the tree made quite a loud rustling sound. It shattered the lovely essence of this landscape of wonderful serenity.  
"Shh! Do you WANT to get us caught, Nott? Or perhaps, you'd prefer to be killed. You know, both can be done QUITE easily." The slightly tenor voice cut cleanly through the air, British accent crisper than a piece of unused, starched parchment.  
"Of c-c-course not, Lucius..." Nott said, a tremble evident in the deep undertones of his voice, "It's not really my fault the tree made that sound..."  
"That was a rhetorical question..." Hissed Lucius softly. "Shut up! God! For once, end your mindless twittering! Remember, we have a bit of an errand to do, and you know what happens to people who get caught and do not complete their mission..." His voice stayed controlled, at the same dangerous softness it had been when he had began talking.  
They hid underneath a bunch of brushweed to make sure that no spies or any security were out. After all, they were trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Their orders were to just simply do what they were told, without drawing any more attention than needed. If anyone saw them spying, they would have to take special measures to make sure whatever was seen was never talked about again.  
"Let's go." Said Lucius, impatience steady in his voice. Their time was now, for the great siege of Hogwarts was yet to begin.  
***  
Ginny Weasley woke up with a start, amber eyes large with the shock of being brought back to unpleasant reality. She could have sworn she had heard something rather like hushed voices deviously planning a rotten scheme.   
She looked around the silent-laced room. Milky moonlight whispered in through golden-beige gauze. All of the others in the dorm were soundly sleeping. It didn't really surprise her to see them dozing away like infants- they were always oblivious to the factor of danger.  
As her feet eased into the worn violet slippers she had gotten a year ago, a scream echoed though the entirety of Hogwarts. The very bloodcurdling sound was, in Ginny's opinion, almost strong enough to make the sturdy gray stone walls of the castle to collapse in an array of dusty microscopic pieces.  
Biting her lip, Ginny looked out through the picture window once more. What she saw gave her a very uneasy feeling residing in the very base of her stomach. A man was lying DEAD on the ground, a trickle of blood oozing severely from his forehead. The grass around him was stained in very gory red that you see in a bad horror movie, not in real life.  
Ginny gaped at the picture set before her eyes. She wanted to scream, but knew that if just yelling achieved her something, it would be death. The blood on the murdered man's forehead looked fresh, still gushing more than a dead person's head truly should. Too terrified to do really anything, she paced around the room, praying that one of her rather numb friends in the dorm would actually wake up and be alert. She highly doubted that.  
Knowing that she needed to DO something more, she snuck a peak out of the truthful window. To her great discontent, there seemed to be someone headed towards the very door of Hogwarts. This matter was getting rather heavy for just one person to hold inside of them.  
Ginny did the only thing that she had ever done to solve a problem: she ran to someone for help. Her feet tiptoed through the lush carpet in the dorm until she reached the door. With a great strength many thought she did not posess, Ginny sprinted towards the seventh year girl's dormitory, hoping to find Hermione.   
Breath coming out in labored gasps, Ginny's toes meshed in with the dark burgundy carpet. Normally, this plush rug would be one of great comfort. This horrible night, it was more like an obstacle than a luxury. She would have to bring this up with Hermione, who was head girl.  
Ginny maneuvered her way across the rows of beds, stopping at last when she got to Hermione's. The curtain was drawn, as always. Needing to tell someone something, she basically ripped the crimson velvet curtain off of its hinges.  
As is suspected with most ironic things, Hermione was not there. No note was there to explain her whereabouts. Not even the typical soccer-ball under the sheets was part of the scene. Just a bunch of wrinkled red-pink cotton blankets.  
Frustrated, Ginny had an idea of where she might be. From Ginny hanging out with the so-called "Three Musketeers", she had learned that they mostly spent a small part of the night in the Gryffindor common room.   
Sardonically, Ginny began thinking thoughts that she knew that she shouldn't be even dreaming about. With about the vengeance of bitter wine, horrible ideas floated into her head.   
'They all follow Harry Potter like he's a bloody god. Like ducklings following the mother duck. Can't Hermione and Ron really think for themselves? Do they have to rely on his every word?'  
Her hand clasped over her mouth. Was this the beginning of something horrible? Ginny hoped not. She had enough problems already. The eerie thing was about the whisper of thought was that Ginny knew she would never imagine anything that cold. It was like something was controlling her mind, and she only had a shred of control left.  
"Crap," she said under her breath, "If I don't get a move on, I will never be able to tell anyone what I saw. If I don't tell a teacher tonight, the entire school might be dead by tomorrow. And it would be all of my fault."  
Ginny's feet pounded against the hard stone floor. She would really have to tell Hermione, who was head girl, about the cobblestones and how easy they were to trip over. But that was not the point.  
As she ran, her feet caught on something rather slippery, and Ginny fell. Her knee was scraped lightly, but the pain was no less. It was just another part of her objective that she had to live with for this one odd night. Cursing slightly as she got up, she examined the thing that had made her crumple. It was no more than a smooth piece of parchment, with a bit of wax on it for a seal.  
Gingerly, Ginny opened the letter. It had all sorts of symbols on it, things she couldn't begin to imagine. She would have to take out a book from the library to find out what it said.  
It read:  
  
@2000 101501 lordfall. noidea.power. mmt@1800. no?'s. *snakefang*  
  
Ginny's head spun. If she even began to translate this cryptic message, most likely she would pass out. Ginny couldn't stay in the middle of the hall and ponder all night long about what the complex note meant. With her luck at the time, the message was probably some sort of...ransom note. With a sigh, Ginny decided that it was time to attempt the mad dash again.  
Her slippers were what was slowing her down. Kicking them off in a rage of agitated fury, she began to carefully run at 30-second intervals until she got to the common room. From there, Ginny would be able to talk to McGonagall about the situation. Her plan was not to be foiled, at any rate. Succeed with the awkward position of heroism, she was a goddess, worshipped among the fellow students. Failure would surely win Ginny an all-expenses-paid trip to the House of Lockhart- Saint Mungo's...that was best-situation scenario.  
Ginny's breath came in gulps of air, forcing her worn body to move forward. Her limbs were beginning to freeze up. A great black spot was growing behind her eyelids. It was taking an unusually long time to walk towards the common room- on normal days, the 0.1 kilometer pathway towards the sacred meeting area took around five minutes. This was taking Ginny around twenty.  
Occasionally on this unfortunate journey, Ginny heard loud, screechy noises. It was taking all of her resolve to think that the sounds were just bats, and not crazed assassins willing to kill the entire student and faculty body of Hogwarts. Judging by the murdered man she had seen that Saturday night, the idea wasn't precisely quite far off.  
Dull lights found their way towards Ginny's blackened sense of sight. She was there. Finally at the sacred sanctuary, where she could blurt out everything she had seen to her brother and his friends- if they were still there.  
'You never stopped to think of that...' a voice in Ginny's head said in a mocking tone. 'Face it, the time is probably about one or two in the morning by now, and that just is not a normal hour to be up.'  
The dim lighting of pale candles and torches* intensified in the large room, strongly outlining the plaid couch and burgundy velour chairs. No sight of Harry, Ron, or Hermione so far. Tiny noises infiltrated the room. If Ginny strained her ears, she could hear murmurs of the night that almost could translate as whispers.  
(* by torches= I mean the American version, of actual sticks with fire on them, not the British/Scottish version. BTW, torches in British are flashlights! *..*)   
A medium-voiced crash was present in the air. Ginny whirled around on her foot. She was royally freaked out now. If anything else rather remotely creepy happened, she would probably be shipped first-class to the infirmary.  
"...Bloody heck, Ron! Do try not to do that again! In other words- don't give me a bloomin' heart attack for the second time in a minute." The soft female voice was barely more than a whisper, but the sound reverberated through the stone walls of the cathedral-like castle. Ginny recognised the tone of the sound emitting from the girl's mouth...she identified the person as Hermione.  
"Oh god...why are you all hiding out behind this...couch?" Ginny questioned the members of the group. She highly doubted that curling up into a little ball because of fear was on Harry Potter's to-do list.  
"Is that you, Ginn?" Harry's calm British accent was softer than normal, making Ginny realised that maybe she wasn't the only one who had seen the murdered man.  
"Yeah. Did you see the dead man outside?" She crouched down behind the couch. It was a lot easier to speak to them on this level.   
Ron's snappy voice answered with a note of impatience. "Of course we did! Hermione was the first to notice him. She saw them--there were two adults on campus, see--" Ginny nodded her head, signifying that she knew what he meant. "We think that the two men were death eaters. As you know, one of 'em had pale hair. The dead one had dark. There's only a few people I know in the school of Hogwarts that have blonde hair, and one of them's that blasted bloody git Malfoy. Apparently, it looks like the people were trying to enter the school, most likely not for a friendly chat with Lupin. The supposed death eaters were having an argument, by the looks of it, and Malfoy's daddy killed him because he didn't agree---"  
Hermione interrupted Ron's biased narrative. "We are assuming that the pale-haired, who may not be 'Malfoy's Daddy', Ron, is still trying to enter the school. From what I've heard with muggles when these types of things happen, you're supposed to close all doors and HIDE. The common room doesn't have doors, and evidently sneaking behind the sofa wasn't a very good place to choose to scurry away to. I would get up and tell Professor McGonagall, but I'm unarmed. Danger might be lurking in the halls. I want to help, but I can't...Ginn, do you have your wand?"  
Ginny swore. "I didn't think of it. I was in a rush to find McGonagall. I didn't think of the consequences. Well, I think I've already tried luck today. I suggest that we all be quiet now and don't talk unless someone is trying to kill you. No talking also means no snogging." Ginny cast a look at her brother and Hermione, who were very much an item. "If anyone goes, it should either be me or Ron. We're all at horrible stakes against Lucius, if it is him, but Ron and I certainly won't be in immediate mortal peril."  
The room went silent for quite a few moments, seeming like an eternity. All were lost in dreams of despair. Eerie light echoed through the otherwise cheerful room, casting a foreboding look that made the very walls seem to shiver.  
Ginny's breathing became faster and harder, coming in small gasps. She and the others were too young to die. What if they were killed as martyrs, like Harry's parents?! A shiny metal of courage would be very little solace to the Grangers and the Weasleys...especially the Weasley clan, because they were so close with the quartet it would feel like they were losing four very dear children instead of two.  
The lights in the room dimmed to a mere shroud of clarity, vaguely emphasizing the air of peril very noticed in the room.  
A smooth, drawling voice cut through the thick silence with the simplicity of a knife through butter.   
"Well, well, well..." Mocked the masculine voice, who seemed to have a ring of crispness surrounding it. "If it isn't Robin Hood and his band of merry muggle-lovers. Seems like tough Mr. Hood might take a little bit of a fall with the old Sheriff of Nottingham."  
  
  
END.  
*****  
  
A/N: Oh my god...this was really freaky. ;) I got the title of this chapter from the Alien Ant Farm song "Flesh and Bone." It's an annoying song, but hey, I'll put it here!  
  
"...and I come between, halos, demons,  
All these words with cryptic meanings,  
Seperate seasons..."  
  
OK! Please E/R/R. Enjoy, read, review. Tell me what you think. I love this story...and if you like me you'll like Bianca. Who's Bianca?? Read future chapters to find out. :)   
  
A/N: This basically reflected some of the things I felt of September 11th. Scared to death, and disgustingly fascinated. I'm still very scared because I've flown into basically all of the airports that the hijackers were at. ^^;, indeed. So...let your stomachs settle and relax for the time being.  
  
  
  



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